Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Monday that President Trump instructed him to work with Democrats on immigration reform, a day after President Trump told "60 Minutes" that his mass deportation campaign may have gone too far - but Mullin says that won't include Amnesty.
"We're never going to allow amnesty to happen," Mullin told reporters at a counter-drone conference in Maryland. He then left one door open: "Now, if we want to have an immigration reform to where we can look at DACA and figure out a way that these individuals can become maybe legal permanent citizens or something like this, that'll be up to Congress." Mullin was referring to recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which provides temporary protection from deportation and work authorization to eligible immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.
There are roughly 440,000 DACA recipients in the United States as of June 30 of this year.
Mullin said "a lot of Democrats" have called him about working together. "I've let the president know that those calls are coming in, and the president has said, 'Let's start working with them and then let's meet at some point,'" he said. He added that he and Trump have not had a "conversation about changing the policy" and that the administration's "approach to law enforcement ... isn't going to change."
The President said the same thing in his own words Monday. The White House Rapid Response account posted video of him saying, "There's NO AMNESTY... My policy hasn't changed."
In the "60 Minutes" interview from Sunday, Trump said he would "love" to make an immigration deal with Democrats and that it could offer some form of legal status to non-criminal illegal immigrants who are working and paying taxes. He also admitted deportations "might be too tough" an hour before naming Stephen Miller, the policy's architect, his chief of staff.
The White House pushed back on the "amnesty" thing before Mullin spoke. Responding to a post arguing Trump was backing an "amnesty deal," Rapid Response wrote, "Wrong. The word 'amnesty' was never even said in this entire exchange."
Immigration hawks were not waiting for the meeting. Political consultant Ryan Gidursky said a bipartisan deal scaling back the deportation effort "will kill the party." Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren answered a clip of the interview with "Come again?" And Josh Hammer, senior counsel at the Article III Project, said Trump came to the "wrong conclusion from this election."
A March DHS post said the DACA program "does not confer any form of legal status in this country" and that recipients can be arrested and deported, adding that ICE arrested 264 DACA recipients from Jan. 20 to Sept. 28, 2025, more than 92% of whom had been charged with or convicted of a crime, Fox News said. Eight months later, the department's secretary is pointing to Congress to decide whether those same recipients get permanent status.